The CP'98 Workshop on Constraint Problem Reformulation

Roughly 30 people attended this workshop. This article summarizes the papers presented at the workshop and highlights some of the questions and issues raised during the discussion. The task of selecting the best representation for solving a problem by means of automatically reformulating the problem is a core challenge in AI. Saul Amarel (1968) outlined the impact of different representations of the missionaries and cannibals problem on the performance of the algorithms used to solve the problem. He also proposed automating the reformulation process and, consequently, the process of selecting representations: The general problem of representation is concerned with the relationship between different ways of formulating a problem to a problem solving system and the efficiency with which the system can be expected to find a solution to the problem.